An official Google Play Music app is finally available on iOS, bringing Google’s All Access music streaming service to your iPhone. Users can listen to millions of tracks on demand and enjoy custom radio with no limits, as well as access to the music they’ve uploaded to Google’s cloud-based storage service.
Nothing gets us through a day at the office quite like some brand-spankin’ new music. And Grooveshark is one of the best places to discover what’s on the cutting edge.
Cult of Mac Deals has teamed up with Grooveshark to bring you a premium one-year subscription to Grooveshark Anywhere. This gives you unlimited commercial-free streaming of their on-demand music service on your desktop, tablet, and smartphone browsers. Enjoy over 15 million tunes, easy music curation, and online radio from the largest community of music lovers on the web. And do so for 50% off the regular price – just $49.
Music streaming service Deezer has today announced that it now has more than 5 million paid subscribers worldwide, and it’s launching a new native Mac app that will improve the Deezer experience on your desktop. The app will sync with your existing iTunes library, and it will allow you to store music locally for offline access.
When Apple announced iTunes Radio at WWDC this June, it looked like a lot of subscription radio services would take a massive hit. But for Pandora, things couldn’t be better. Since Apple’s new service made its debut alongside iOS 7 back in September, listening has increased by 9 percent.
Yes, Kickstarter projects are still a dime a dozen, but this game is worth your attention.
It’s Sentris, a music-creation tool that masquerades as a puzzle game. Want to play a music or rhythm game without having to figure out how to hold a plastic guitar? Sentris is the game for you.
We saw Sentris last month at the 2013 Seattle Indies eXpo (SIX3), which was co-located with the Penny Arcade Expo in downtown Seattle.
Developer Samantha Kalman hopes to release a full game–she’s only put together a stunning prototype at this point–and she’s taken time to explain why in the video below.
If there’s one group of people who could seriously do with less wires — or in this case, cables — it’s guitarists. Walking around with two grand worth of Fender in your hands, trying avoiding a snake-pit of cables and simultaneously tapping out Van Halen’s Eruption probably takes some concentration (I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been on stage with anything but an air guitar, which was completely wireless).
IK Multimedia’s new four-pedal iRig BlueBoard pedalboard de-clutters the floor a little, as it’s the first completely wireless pedalboard for iOS and Macs. The board connects to its companion app on an accompanying iDevice (or to a Mac) through a Bluetooth connection.
Music lovers rejoice! Capo, the Apple Design Award-winning app that teaches you how to play your favorite tunes, has been updated to version 3.0 today.
Developed by indie dev Chris Liscio of SuperMegaUltraGroovy, Capo 3 is a major redesign that packs several new features. The coolest addition of them all is automatic chord and beat detection that instantly analyzes a song loaded from iTunes and adjusts as you tune, change key, or start using a.. er.. capo.
I spend a ton of time at the computer keyboard, typing consistently as I write post after post. But there are times when I like to get hands-on with another activity that I enjoy: playing guitar.
Now I’m not that great of a guitarist (I can handle myself sitting around a campfire and have learned to play quite a few tunes), so taking some instructional classes wouldn’t be all that bad of an idea. And doing so from the comfort of my home would be an even better idea. It’d be even better if I could take them whenever I wanted.
This offer from Cult of Mac Deals makes all of that possible. With The Complete Guitar Lessons Course you can learn how to play the guitar at your own speed for only $59 – a savings of 70%!
You know what’s great about Spotify and Rdio? The fact that they both exist, and that they’re both great services. Why? Competition. It’s hard to think of two other arch rivals which are adding great new features to their services so quickly.
Today it’s the turn of Rdio, which has slipped recommendations into its music-streaming service, taking the pressure off you to pick a song for yourself.
iOS 7 is much more than a pretty face. Early “news” reporting focussed on the new look provided at the last minute by Jony Ive and team, but the inner workings of the new OS have clearly been under development for a lot longer. So, try to look past the bright colors, blurred popovers and beautiful parallax for a moment, and join us as we take a tour of the best new features of iOS 7.
Over the past ten years, some Apple customers have argued that the iTunes store is an illegal monopoly because songs purchased inside the store can’t be played on Apple devices, but an appeals court in California has finally thrown out those claims once and for all.
A three-judge panel confirmed that Apple’s digital right management system known as FairPlay has not broken any antitrust laws, after a long-running class action lawsuit claimed Apple is running a monopoly by forcing iTunes users to also buy Apple products to listen to their songs.
Spotify announced today that it is launching a new way to streaming music to connected speakers around the house with its new “Spotify Connect” feature that is coming to a line-up of Spotify-supported speakers.
The new AirPlay-like feature allows you to walk into your house and seamlessly switch from listening to your playlist on your iPhone to playing music on your living room speakers. You current listening session is synced up to the cloud so you can switch faster without stopping the flow of music.
Unlike AirPlay though, Spotify Connect will cost you some money as the feature will only be available soon to Premium subscribers. Third-party OEMs are expect to roll out Connect supported speakers later this year.
Here’s a promo video on how Connect works:
Apple has today launched a Back to School iTunes music sale with selected albums reduced to as little as $6.99. The deals aim to give students “a smart deal on cool albums” from the likes of Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Pink, and Lana Del Rey.
Shazam, Shazam Encore, and Shazam RED for iOS have today been updated with a number of new features and improvements. In addition to faster recognition on older iOS devices, and improved recognition in “difficult” environments, the release also brings Twitter previews and new TV experiences for those in the United States.
Can’t make it to this year’s iTunes Festival in London? Don’t worry — you’ll be able to enjoy the whole thing live from the comfort of your armchair. Apple has today updated its official iTunes Festival London app to add video streaming for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Apple’s 30-day concert series is about to take off in just three days, so to promote the iTunes Festival and the bevy of artists that will be putting on free shows, the Apple Store iOS app is giving away six free tracks to iOS users.
To get the free tracks all you have to do is download the Apple Store app and then tap on the “30 Nights of Music” section on the main screen. The offer officially expires on October 31st, 2013.
The full track list:
Apple’s iTunes Radio service doesn’t launch in the U.S. for a few more weeks, but Rdio’s been pumping some awesome updates into its iOS app to get ready. The latest Rdio update for iOS today added the much needed Station Tuning that’s been available on desktop since the launch of You FM earlier this month.
The Rdio 2.3.1 update also comes with a redesigned view for Collection that features a new album art view. Some UI tweaks and bug fixes were also tossed in for good measure along with improved search.
Here are the full notes:
DJing (or is that deejaying?) on the iPad is pretty rad, but what do you do about cueing up the next track? If you’ve got $20 to spend, you can buy the Traktor DJ cable, a splitter that lets you cue a track with your headphones and play another through the speakers.
The iTunes Festival is an annual, month-long music festival and concert series that Apple has thrown since 2007 at the Roundhouse Art Centre in London. Earlier this year, Apple revealed the lineup for the 2013 Festival, but now Cupertino is starting to get the ball rolling on the festivities, updating the Apple TV with a new channel and updating the iTunes Festival iOS app accordingly.
When I pick up a guitar, pretty much the only thing I can do is tune the thing. Well, that’s not entirely true: I can coil the strings and keep a burning cigarette in there, Eric Clapton-style, but as I quit smoking a few years back that’s not so useful anymore.
However, I’m fully aware that there are people out there who can thrash some amazing sounds out of their axes, and yet have trouble keeping the things in tune. SteadyTune, a Mac app that’s always waiting in the menu bar, is there to help.
Rdio announced this morning that it is launching a new personalized radio station feature to take on Pandora and iTunes Radio. The new radio station feature, dubbed You FM, combines users’ listening history with track voting, Facebook likes, Twitter follows and more to give each user an individualized experience.
Users can tune stations towards familiar or adventurous sounds or pivot it based on your favorite tracks. The new stations feature is available now on the App Store, Google Play and the web.
Here are the other features Rdio added:
Apple’s yearly music festival is set to kick off at the Roundhouse venue in London’s Chalk Farm next month, and while the festival already had 23 acts slated for the month long concert, Apple just added 17 more artists to the line-up.
The new additions include Avicii, Bastille, Janelle Monae, The Lumineers, Tinie Tempah and many more to go alongside Elton John and Justin Timberlake. U.K. residents can use the iTunes Festival app to get free tickets, while the rest of the world will be able to watch the shows live from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV.
Here’s the full line-up:
Here’s a problem: Let’s say you’re a diabolical dictator bent on world domination. You’ve decided to bypass the corporate mass media (which can’t be trusted) and inform the little people of your plans via podcast. You create one—only you don’t have a method of broadcasting the podcast, since you insist on personally playing your message directly onto the iDevices of your soon-to-be thralls.
The answer, of course, is the world-domination tool TuneMob. As long as you can gather everyone in the world into the same room. And by everyone, I mean a maximum of seven people. Who all need to be running TuneMob. And have fairly newish iDevices.
We all hate iTunes—it’s the fashionable thing to do. The smarter amongst us have switched over to Rdio and Spotify or another streaming service, and use iTunes solely as a way to sync our iDevices.
But Vox is a new app (launching today) which will give you access to your iTunes library without all the cruft that makes it almost impossible to use for, you know, tunes. It’s pretty sweet.
Apple has uploaded a new iPhone 5 ad today to its YouTube channel that showcases FaceTime video calling. Entitled “FaceTime Every Day,” the one-minute clip continues the “Every Day” series which began earlier this year, promoting features that are more popular on the iPhone than on any other smartphone.
